Friday, February 18, 2011

Let's Declare War on the Sun!

Stupid sun, thinks it's so great...

Sure, it makes life possible, and without it our planet would be just another frozen rock adrift in the void, but what has our sun done for us lately? I'll tell you what it hasn't not been doing. It hasn't not been bombarding our planet with powerful solar flares of a magnitude not seen in years (specifically 6 years). In fact, it's been doing the opposite of not doing that. Well you know what? I'm sick of it. Enough is enough, the line must be drawn here.

Damn you sun!
Damn you to hell!

Of course you're probably thinking: "So what? Solar flares happen all the time..." Well, I'll tell you so what, the results will be devastating: power grids might be theoretically disrupted possibly leading to mild inconveniences, communications satellites might drop an occasional call, aurora borealis might even appear at slightly more southern latitudes than it typically does. That's so what. Sure, right now our shields are holding, but for how long I ask you? I say it's time we come up with a plan 'B.' Below I've outlined three bold new alternatives to help us deal our suddenly hostile yellow dwarf:

We'll get eight full minutes of basking in our triumph
before we get a face full of corona.
I like my victories pyrrhic.

1-Destroy the sun. Now hear me out, because at first this sounds insane (and it is). If we were to destroy the sun, we would have (according to this guy) about eight minutes to celebrate our victory. The only question is how to pull it off...On Star Trek all you need is trilithium, but (as I've oft lamented) life rarely works like it does on Star Trek.

If only Lorne Greene were still alive.
His soothing narration
would make the yahrens just fly by...

2-Abandon the Earth. Let's face it, the sun is like, way bigger than the Earth and made of fire. We just can't win. So why not pile into some space arks and find a primary star that appreciates us? Admittedly, this plan is not without its hurdles. First, it would take like tens of thousands of years to get to the nearest star. Second, we have at last count zero space arks, so putting together a ragtag fleet might take some doing. Of course if NASA had listened to me, we'd already have dozens of spaceships idling in orbit ready to carry us to Proxima Centauri...Thanks NASA, thanks for nothing.

Sure, there's bound to be some Morlockism, but it's a small price to pay.

3-Burrow underground. This I think is the most practical solution, mostly because it worked in the Matrix and we're way more clever than any society that chooses Keanu Reeves as its messiah. Despite being faced with extinction at the hands (or metal claws) of the machines, they somehow managed to carve out a fortified underground city able to sustain a population of 250,000 complete with apartments, bathroom facilities and an orgy cave. Imagine what we could accomplish without the looming threat of robo-squids and wooden acting?

Sure, some of these options may seem drastic, but the sun needs to understand that it can't get away with carelessly ejecting coronal mass in our direction. Who does it think it is anyway?